OH PLEASE. Rand killed his own chances. He did it all by himself. If he had wanted to kill his campaign, he couldn't have done a better job of it. Now, THAT is the truth. Deal with it.

Originally Posted by LibertyEagle

Nope.

It was indeed sad to watch. It started with Rand supporting McConnell against being called a liar on the Senate floor. It made him look like establishment, in a political climate where establishment was not the thing to be.

You have a convenient memory, Ender.

Oh, go please yourself, if anyone or anything can please you. Nobody's memory is more convenient than yours. You sat here through two Ron Paul primaries, yet you forgot that whom the media does not approve of, the media does not mention. Ron Paul didn't even get his name in the news when he came in second in a primary, even though the candidates who came in first, third and fourth did get named. That is how the media treats candidates it is told to disapprove of. That is how the media torpedoes candidates. It does not take a poll of Republican primary voters, find out they hate and mistrust the media, then advertise nonstop 24/7 that they do not approve of that Republican primary candidate. They do not mention him at all. He gets no free advertising. None.

And Trump? Trump got nonstop advertising. Nonstop. He got 100% of the publicity. How can I say 100% when other candidates did appear? I documented this stuff. I watched the Sunday Morning Broadcast Blather every week for months. You can see the results here:

Examine it closely, and you can see that Trump was the only Republican blathered about every Sunday, week in and week out, like clockwork. Of course, that doesn't mean he got 100% of the coverage. He might have gotten coverage on every show, while the sixteen other candidates may have only been seen and mentioned one week in sixteen. But, of course, that isn't 100% coverage for Trump. But those sixteen other candidates all got asked questions about Trump during their infrequent interviews. Every one of them, every time. Seventeen candidates was unprecedented. One of seventeen candidates getting coverage on every show was unprecedented. But all candidates getting asked to comment on one particular candidate in every single interview was just infamous. It was a completely different world than the one we grew up in. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before. And if the candidate getting interviewed said, I don't want to talk about him, I have my own ideas, he or she was badgered until he or she did consent to talk about that other candidate. Sometimes the whole interview consisted of him or her getting badgered into talking about Trump.

And, no, I'm not going to listen to the standard line about how the media played Trump up for ratings. Maybe pointing a camera at Trump was good for ratings, maybe it wasn't. But pointing a camera at someone else and asking them about Trump is not something that they did for ratings. Period.

In this way, Trump got 100% of the coverage. One hundred percent. One. Hundred. Per. Cent. undergroundrr has explained this to you. mello has explained this to you. ds21089 explained it. But like a good little propagandist, your convenient memory forgets what you heard the moment you hear it. And what did we get in the end? Weapons to Saudi Arabia, Yemen starved, North Korea demonized, inflation so severe that soon the multinationals won't mind hiring us because somebody getting a nickel an hour during the Coolidge years is better off than us, and we've been third-worldized. And no doubt you'd consider that a victory, because we may be working for slave wages, but at least we're working. Kind of like how the new multinational 'deals' are a damned sight worse for America than the TPP, but at least they aren't called the TPP, so you're happy.

The only difference between dannno's blind support--the kind of blind support that allows someone to point out that Trump's endorsement doesn't always get a candidate elected, dannno to ask them if they're insane, that someone to point to an actual case where Trump's endorsement didn't get a candidate elected, and dannno to ask who cares--and your blind support is, at least dannno isn't constantly in bitchy mood.

That election was engineered. Rand Paul studied his father's runs, and set out to make a run where he didn't give the media any way to attack him and marginalize him the way they did his father. He set out to run on a rational platform without getting marginalized in voters' minds as 'kooky'. And he succeeded. But instead he was marginalized by being one of seventeen candidates in a field so crowded that not even the serious wonks could name them all. Instead he got marginalized by paid and unpaid trolls--even on grassroots libertarian forums--who continually used his best efforts to look and sound mainstream (the very thing many of us wished aloud his father would do through two campaigns) to cast aspersions on him and sow doubt that he might be 'Establishment'. And then along comes a filthy rich insider who the media advertised--through providing him with one hundred percent of the Republican primary coverage and fakenewsing him as "anti-establishment"--and the paid trolls pretended to buy it, and the unpaid trolls did buy it.

Did any part of the media even once say they disapproved of Ron Paul? Of course not! They knew that would be a selling point! They knew that would be a selling point eight years before Trump got in the race, yet they said that about Trump every day and you believed it!

Somebody's stupid. I'm not saying who. But somebody's either a paid troll, or stupid.

And where's our country now? Besides Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Korean peninsula, the Ukraine, and every G20 and Bilderburg conference under the sun, that is. Salivating like dogs every time we get thrown a bone, such as when we hear that no regulations are getting repealed, but at least we're getting new ones shoved down our throats less than half as fast as we were under Obama? This is what conservatives are reduced to? We blame our genuine conservatives for torpedoing their own campaign because they obey Reagan's dictum of 'never speak ill of another Republican'? McConnell? Really? Do forty percent of Kentuckians even know who he is? Does ten percent of the general American population even know who McConnell is? Rand lost because Mc-$#@!ing-Connell? McConnell? Are you $#@!ing kidding me?

This election was engineered right out from under conscientious, traditional, freedom-loving Americans. And like the girl in the old Shake and Bake commercials, you can proudly say, 'And Ah heped!' Well congratu-$#@!ing-lations. When are you going to get enough sense to stop bragging about helping torpedo your own nation and all the people in it?

Rand killed his own campaign. Bull-flipping-$#@!. Rand ran the only kind of campaign any sane person would try to run after seeing what was done to his father. He tried to run on a platform of liberty and free enterprise without marginalizing himself so the media could dismiss him out of hand. And the media painted someone else as someone they hated, and publicized him 24/7 right into the White House. When are the people who bought that bull$#@! hook line and sinker going to stop bragging about what fools they've been? That's what I want to know. I can understand the paid trolls hanging around. But when are the suckers going to stop bragging about being suckers?

I've been trying to figure out since the Nixon Administration became the Ford Administration why Republican voters stick by their mistakes so doggedly. Shakespeare made sense when he said, 'To thine own self be true.' You don't gain anything trying to explain to the world how the people who suckered you didn't really sucker you but ulcers and headaches.

As for you Lesser of Two Evil trolls, stuff it. This isn't about whether Trump or Pence or Be'ezelbub is worse than Hillary $#@!ing Clinton. This isn't even so much about the person I responded to. This is mostly about traitors like AuHtwenty and his horde of concern trolls, and their relentless efforts to cast aspersions on Rand Paul before Iowa. Anti-American traitorous fascist bastards. Of course, they were just doing their jobs. Whatever. And now they slink around and, since there's no election right now, say placating things like, gee, that didn't work out as well as I hoped. But as long as we keep blaming Rand Paul for not finding a way to run a perfect campaign despite the obvious and golden fact that the media will not cooperate, the longer the traitorous bastards are going to keep fooling us into shooting ourselves in the foot. That debacle was not Rand Paul's fault. He did the obvious thing. And if we hadn't been suckered into leaving him high and dry, it might have actually worked despite the media's efforts to sink us. But instead, we listened to media trolls, and let the man down. Period. And as long as we let them divide and conquer us over trivia and unfounded bull$#@!, Hayek was right and we're $#@!ing useless.

'In the first instance, it is probably true that, in general, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and “common” instincts and tastes prevail.

'It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people.'--Friedrich Hayek

And how many of you didn't get paid, yet can say we blew our best chance ever...

Oh, go please yourself, if anyone or anything can please you. Nobody's memory is more convenient than yours. You sat here through two Ron Paul primaries, yet you forgot that whom the media does not approve of, the media does not mention. Ron Paul didn't even get his name in the news when he came in second in a primary, even though the candidates who came in first, third and fourth did get named. That is how the media treats candidates it is told to disapprove of. That is how the media torpedoes candidates. It does not take a poll of Republican primary voters, find out they hate and mistrust the media, then advertise nonstop 24/7 that they do not approve of that Republican primary candidate. They do not mention him at all. He gets no free advertising. None.

And Trump? Trump got nonstop advertising. Nonstop. He got 100% of the publicity. How can I say 100% when other candidates did appear? I documented this stuff. I watched the Sunday Morning Broadcast Blather every week for months. You can see the results here:

Examine it closely, and you can see that Trump was the only Republican blathered about every Sunday, week in and week out, like clockwork. Of course, that doesn't mean he got 100% of the coverage. He might have gotten coverage on every show, while the sixteen other candidates may have only been seen and mentioned one week in sixteen. But, of course, that isn't 100% coverage for Trump. But those sixteen other candidates all got asked questions about Trump during their infrequent interviews. Every one of them, every time. Seventeen candidates was unprecedented. One of seventeen candidates getting coverage on every show was unprecedented. But all candidates getting asked to comment on one particular candidate in every single interview was just infamous. It was a completely different world than the one we grew up in. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before. And if the candidate getting interviewed said, I don't want to talk about him, I have my own ideas, he or she was badgered until he or she did consent to talk about that other candidate. Sometimes the whole interview consisted of him or her getting badgered into talking about Trump.

And, no, I'm not going to listen to the standard line about how the media played Trump up for ratings. Maybe pointing a camera at Trump was good for ratings, maybe it wasn't. But pointing a camera at someone else and asking them about Trump is not something that they did for ratings. Period.

In this way, Trump got 100% of the coverage. One hundred percent. One. Hundred. Per. Cent. undergroundrr has explained this to you. mello has explained this to you. ds21089 explained it. But like a good little propagandist, your convenient memory forgets what you heard the moment you hear it. And what did we get in the end? Weapons to Saudi Arabia, Yemen starved, North Korea demonized, inflation so severe that soon the multinationals won't mind hiring us because somebody getting a nickel an hour during the Coolidge years is better off than us, and we've been third-worldized. And no doubt you'd consider that a victory, because we may be working for slave wages, but at least we're working. Kind of like how the new multinational 'deals' are a damned sight worse for America than the TPP, but at least they aren't called the TPP, so you're happy.

The only difference between dannno's blind support--the kind of blind support that allows someone to point out that Trump's endorsement doesn't always get a candidate elected, dannno to ask them if they're insane, that someone to point to an actual case where Trump's endorsement didn't get a candidate elected, and dannno to ask who cares--and your blind support is, at least dannno isn't constantly in bitchy mood.

That election was engineered. Rand Paul studied his father's runs, and set out to make a run where he didn't give the media any way to attack him and marginalize him the way they did his father. He set out to run on a rational platform without getting marginalized in voters' minds as 'kooky'. And he succeeded. But instead he was marginalized by being one of seventeen candidates in a field so crowded that not even the serious wonks could name them all. Instead he got marginalized by paid and unpaid trolls--even on grassroots libertarian forums--who continually used his best efforts to look and sound mainstream (the very thing many of us wished aloud his father would do through two campaigns) to cast aspersions on him and sow doubt that he might be 'Establishment'. And then along comes a filthy rich insider who the media advertised--through providing him with one hundred percent of the Republican primary coverage and fakenewsing him as "anti-establishment"--and the paid trolls pretended to buy it, and the unpaid trolls did buy it.

Did any part of the media even once say they disapproved of Ron Paul? Of course not! They knew that would be a selling point! They knew that would be a selling point eight years before Trump got in the race, yet they said that about Trump every day and you believed it!

Somebody's stupid. I'm not saying who. But somebody's either a paid troll, or stupid.

And where's our country now? Besides Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Korean peninsula, the Ukraine, and every G20 and Bilderburg conference under the sun, that is. Salivating like dogs every time we get thrown a bone, such as when we hear that no regulations are getting repealed, but at least we're getting new ones shoved down our throats less than half as fast as we were under Obama? This is what conservatives are reduced to? We blame our genuine conservatives for torpedoing their own campaign because they obey Reagan's dictum of 'never speak ill of another Republican'? McConnell? Really? Do forty percent of Kentuckians even know who he is? Does ten percent of the general American population even know who McConnell is? Rand lost because Mc-$#@!ing-Connell? McConnell? Are you $#@!ing kidding me?

This election was engineered right out from under conscientious, traditional, freedom-loving Americans. And like the girl in the old Shake and Bake commercials, you can proudly say, 'And Ah heped!' Well congratu-$#@!ing-lations. When are you going to get enough sense to stop bragging about helping torpedo your own nation and all the people in it?

Rand killed his own campaign. Bull-flipping-$#@!. Rand ran the only kind of campaign any sane person would try to run after seeing what was done to his father. He tried to run on a platform of liberty and free enterprise without marginalizing himself so the media could dismiss him out of hand. And the media painted someone else as someone they hated, and publicized him 24/7 right into the White House. When are the people who bought that bull$#@! hook line and sinker going to stop bragging about what fools they've been? That's what I want to know. I can understand the paid trolls hanging around. But when are the suckers going to stop bragging about being suckers?

I've been trying to figure out since the Nixon Administration became the Ford Administration why Republican voters stick by their mistakes so doggedly. Shakespeare made sense when he said, 'To thine own self be true.' You don't gain anything trying to explain to the world how the people who suckered you didn't really sucker you but ulcers and headaches.

As for you Lesser of Two Evil trolls, stuff it. This isn't about whether Trump or Pence or Be'ezelbub is worse than Hillary $#@!ing Clinton. This isn't even so much about the person I responded to. This is mostly about traitors like AuHtwenty and his horde of concern trolls, and their relentless efforts to cast aspersions on Rand Paul before Iowa. Anti-American traitorous fascist bastards. Of course, they were just doing their jobs. Whatever. And now they slink around and, since there's no election right now, say placating things like, gee, that didn't work out as well as I hoped. But as long as we keep blaming Rand Paul for not finding a way to run a perfect campaign despite the obvious and golden fact that the media will not cooperate, the longer the traitorous bastards are going to keep fooling us into shooting ourselves in the foot. That debacle was not Rand Paul's fault. He did the obvious thing. And if we hadn't been suckered into leaving him high and dry, it might have actually worked despite the media's efforts to sink us. But instead, we listened to media trolls, and let the man down. Period. And as long as we let them divide and conquer us over trivia and unfounded bull$#@!, Hayek was right and we're $#@!ing useless.

And how many of you didn't get paid, yet can say we blew our best chance ever...

"ideas have the potential of being more powerful than any army....The concept of personal sovereignty was pulled screaming from the ether into this reality by the force of men believing in a self evident truth, that men are meant to be free." - The Northbreather

"Trump is the security blanket of aggrieved white men aged 18-60." - Pinoy

Not even I thought he would be this overt with his support for the neocon foreign policy I can't believe anyone who truly understood Ron Paul would defend Trump after he supported the political establishment his whole life and then ran against Ron Paul in 2012 by telling people not to vote for him. They still come in here though, but I think its because they are rubbing it in, rubbing in that they gave us another Bush inside a trojan horse because the Americans love horses so $#@!ing much we couldn't resist.

I always viewed Trump as that guy who was part of the establishment even though the majority of the establishment hated him. Just because you're on the same team as the globalists doesn't mean that every globalist is going to like you.

I always viewed Trump as that guy who was part of the establishment even though the majority of the establishment hated him. Just because you're on the same team as the globalists doesn't mean that every globalist is going to like you.

Cf. the Wars of the Roses. Remember the democrats and media elites and John McCain hated W. Although I suppose maybe the bird and FeS2 thought Bush was an anti-establishment, globalist-fighting libertarian like they seem to think Trump is.

"ideas have the potential of being more powerful than any army....The concept of personal sovereignty was pulled screaming from the ether into this reality by the force of men believing in a self evident truth, that men are meant to be free." - The Northbreather

"Trump is the security blanket of aggrieved white men aged 18-60." - Pinoy

Oh, go please yourself, if anyone or anything can please you. Nobody's memory is more convenient than yours. You sat here through two Ron Paul primaries, yet you forgot that whom the media does not approve of, the media does not mention. Ron Paul didn't even get his name in the news when he came in second in a primary, even though the candidates who came in first, third and fourth did get named. That is how the media treats candidates it is told to disapprove of. That is how the media torpedoes candidates. It does not take a poll of Republican primary voters, find out they hate and mistrust the media, then advertise nonstop 24/7 that they do not approve of that Republican primary candidate. They do not mention him at all. He gets no free advertising. None.

And Trump? Trump got nonstop advertising. Nonstop. He got 100% of the publicity. How can I say 100% when other candidates did appear? I documented this stuff. I watched the Sunday Morning Broadcast Blather every week for months. You can see the results here:

Examine it closely, and you can see that Trump was the only Republican blathered about every Sunday, week in and week out, like clockwork. Of course, that doesn't mean he got 100% of the coverage. He might have gotten coverage on every show, while the sixteen other candidates may have only been seen and mentioned one week in sixteen. But, of course, that isn't 100% coverage for Trump. But those sixteen other candidates all got asked questions about Trump during their infrequent interviews. Every one of them, every time. Seventeen candidates was unprecedented. One of seventeen candidates getting coverage on every show was unprecedented. But all candidates getting asked to comment on one particular candidate in every single interview was just infamous. It was a completely different world than the one we grew up in. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before. And if the candidate getting interviewed said, I don't want to talk about him, I have my own ideas, he or she was badgered until he or she did consent to talk about that other candidate. Sometimes the whole interview consisted of him or her getting badgered into talking about Trump.

And, no, I'm not going to listen to the standard line about how the media played Trump up for ratings. Maybe pointing a camera at Trump was good for ratings, maybe it wasn't. But pointing a camera at someone else and asking them about Trump is not something that they did for ratings. Period.

In this way, Trump got 100% of the coverage. One hundred percent. One. Hundred. Per. Cent. undergroundrr has explained this to you. mello has explained this to you. ds21089 explained it. But like a good little propagandist, your convenient memory forgets what you heard the moment you hear it. And what did we get in the end? Weapons to Saudi Arabia, Yemen starved, North Korea demonized, inflation so severe that soon the multinationals won't mind hiring us because somebody getting a nickel an hour during the Coolidge years is better off than us, and we've been third-worldized. And no doubt you'd consider that a victory, because we may be working for slave wages, but at least we're working. Kind of like how the new multinational 'deals' are a damned sight worse for America than the TPP, but at least they aren't called the TPP, so you're happy.

The only difference between dannno's blind support--the kind of blind support that allows someone to point out that Trump's endorsement doesn't always get a candidate elected, dannno to ask them if they're insane, that someone to point to an actual case where Trump's endorsement didn't get a candidate elected, and dannno to ask who cares--and your blind support is, at least dannno isn't constantly in bitchy mood.

That election was engineered. Rand Paul studied his father's runs, and set out to make a run where he didn't give the media any way to attack him and marginalize him the way they did his father. He set out to run on a rational platform without getting marginalized in voters' minds as 'kooky'. And he succeeded. But instead he was marginalized by being one of seventeen candidates in a field so crowded that not even the serious wonks could name them all. Instead he got marginalized by paid and unpaid trolls--even on grassroots libertarian forums--who continually used his best efforts to look and sound mainstream (the very thing many of us wished aloud his father would do through two campaigns) to cast aspersions on him and sow doubt that he might be 'Establishment'. And then along comes a filthy rich insider who the media advertised--through providing him with one hundred percent of the Republican primary coverage and fakenewsing him as "anti-establishment"--and the paid trolls pretended to buy it, and the unpaid trolls did buy it.

Did any part of the media even once say they disapproved of Ron Paul? Of course not! They knew that would be a selling point! They knew that would be a selling point eight years before Trump got in the race, yet they said that about Trump every day and you believed it!

Somebody's stupid. I'm not saying who. But somebody's either a paid troll, or stupid.

And where's our country now? Besides Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Korean peninsula, the Ukraine, and every G20 and Bilderburg conference under the sun, that is. Salivating like dogs every time we get thrown a bone, such as when we hear that no regulations are getting repealed, but at least we're getting new ones shoved down our throats less than half as fast as we were under Obama? This is what conservatives are reduced to? We blame our genuine conservatives for torpedoing their own campaign because they obey Reagan's dictum of 'never speak ill of another Republican'? McConnell? Really? Do forty percent of Kentuckians even know who he is? Does ten percent of the general American population even know who McConnell is? Rand lost because Mc-$#@!ing-Connell? McConnell? Are you $#@!ing kidding me?

This election was engineered right out from under conscientious, traditional, freedom-loving Americans. And like the girl in the old Shake and Bake commercials, you can proudly say, 'And Ah heped!' Well congratu-$#@!ing-lations. When are you going to get enough sense to stop bragging about helping torpedo your own nation and all the people in it?

Rand killed his own campaign. Bull-flipping-$#@!. Rand ran the only kind of campaign any sane person would try to run after seeing what was done to his father. He tried to run on a platform of liberty and free enterprise without marginalizing himself so the media could dismiss him out of hand. And the media painted someone else as someone they hated, and publicized him 24/7 right into the White House. When are the people who bought that bull$#@! hook line and sinker going to stop bragging about what fools they've been? That's what I want to know. I can understand the paid trolls hanging around. But when are the suckers going to stop bragging about being suckers?

I've been trying to figure out since the Nixon Administration became the Ford Administration why Republican voters stick by their mistakes so doggedly. Shakespeare made sense when he said, 'To thine own self be true.' You don't gain anything trying to explain to the world how the people who suckered you didn't really sucker you but ulcers and headaches.

As for you Lesser of Two Evil trolls, stuff it. This isn't about whether Trump or Pence or Be'ezelbub is worse than Hillary $#@!ing Clinton. This isn't even so much about the person I responded to. This is mostly about traitors like AuHtwenty and his horde of concern trolls, and their relentless efforts to cast aspersions on Rand Paul before Iowa. Anti-American traitorous fascist bastards. Of course, they were just doing their jobs. Whatever. And now they slink around and, since there's no election right now, say placating things like, gee, that didn't work out as well as I hoped. But as long as we keep blaming Rand Paul for not finding a way to run a perfect campaign despite the obvious and golden fact that the media will not cooperate, the longer the traitorous bastards are going to keep fooling us into shooting ourselves in the foot. That debacle was not Rand Paul's fault. He did the obvious thing. And if we hadn't been suckered into leaving him high and dry, it might have actually worked despite the media's efforts to sink us. But instead, we listened to media trolls, and let the man down. Period. And as long as we let them divide and conquer us over trivia and unfounded bull$#@!, Hayek was right and we're $#@!ing useless.

And how many of you didn't get paid, yet can say we blew our best chance ever...

Oh, go please yourself, if anyone or anything can please you. Nobody's memory is more convenient than yours. You sat here through two Ron Paul primaries, yet you forgot that whom the media does not approve of, the media does not mention. Ron Paul didn't even get his name in the news when he came in second in a primary, even though the candidates who came in first, third and fourth did get named. That is how the media treats candidates it is told to disapprove of. That is how the media torpedoes candidates. It does not take a poll of Republican primary voters, find out they hate and mistrust the media, then advertise nonstop 24/7 that they do not approve of that Republican primary candidate. They do not mention him at all. He gets no free advertising. None.

And Trump? Trump got nonstop advertising. Nonstop. He got 100% of the publicity. How can I say 100% when other candidates did appear? I documented this stuff. I watched the Sunday Morning Broadcast Blather every week for months. You can see the results here:

Examine it closely, and you can see that Trump was the only Republican blathered about every Sunday, week in and week out, like clockwork. Of course, that doesn't mean he got 100% of the coverage. He might have gotten coverage on every show, while the sixteen other candidates may have only been seen and mentioned one week in sixteen. But, of course, that isn't 100% coverage for Trump. But those sixteen other candidates all got asked questions about Trump during their infrequent interviews. Every one of them, every time. Seventeen candidates was unprecedented. One of seventeen candidates getting coverage on every show was unprecedented. But all candidates getting asked to comment on one particular candidate in every single interview was just infamous. It was a completely different world than the one we grew up in. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before. And if the candidate getting interviewed said, I don't want to talk about him, I have my own ideas, he or she was badgered until he or she did consent to talk about that other candidate. Sometimes the whole interview consisted of him or her getting badgered into talking about Trump.

And, no, I'm not going to listen to the standard line about how the media played Trump up for ratings. Maybe pointing a camera at Trump was good for ratings, maybe it wasn't. But pointing a camera at someone else and asking them about Trump is not something that they did for ratings. Period.

In this way, Trump got 100% of the coverage. One hundred percent. One. Hundred. Per. Cent. undergroundrr has explained this to you. mello has explained this to you. ds21089 explained it. But like a good little propagandist, your convenient memory forgets what you heard the moment you hear it. And what did we get in the end? Weapons to Saudi Arabia, Yemen starved, North Korea demonized, inflation so severe that soon the multinationals won't mind hiring us because somebody getting a nickel an hour during the Coolidge years is better off than us, and we've been third-worldized. And no doubt you'd consider that a victory, because we may be working for slave wages, but at least we're working. Kind of like how the new multinational 'deals' are a damned sight worse for America than the TPP, but at least they aren't called the TPP, so you're happy.

The only difference between dannno's blind support--the kind of blind support that allows someone to point out that Trump's endorsement doesn't always get a candidate elected, dannno to ask them if they're insane, that someone to point to an actual case where Trump's endorsement didn't get a candidate elected, and dannno to ask who cares--and your blind support is, at least dannno isn't constantly in bitchy mood.

That election was engineered. Rand Paul studied his father's runs, and set out to make a run where he didn't give the media any way to attack him and marginalize him the way they did his father. He set out to run on a rational platform without getting marginalized in voters' minds as 'kooky'. And he succeeded. But instead he was marginalized by being one of seventeen candidates in a field so crowded that not even the serious wonks could name them all. Instead he got marginalized by paid and unpaid trolls--even on grassroots libertarian forums--who continually used his best efforts to look and sound mainstream (the very thing many of us wished aloud his father would do through two campaigns) to cast aspersions on him and sow doubt that he might be 'Establishment'. And then along comes a filthy rich insider who the media advertised--through providing him with one hundred percent of the Republican primary coverage and fakenewsing him as "anti-establishment"--and the paid trolls pretended to buy it, and the unpaid trolls did buy it.

Did any part of the media even once say they disapproved of Ron Paul? Of course not! They knew that would be a selling point! They knew that would be a selling point eight years before Trump got in the race, yet they said that about Trump every day and you believed it!

Somebody's stupid. I'm not saying who. But somebody's either a paid troll, or stupid.

And where's our country now? Besides Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, the Korean peninsula, the Ukraine, and every G20 and Bilderburg conference under the sun, that is. Salivating like dogs every time we get thrown a bone, such as when we hear that no regulations are getting repealed, but at least we're getting new ones shoved down our throats less than half as fast as we were under Obama? This is what conservatives are reduced to? We blame our genuine conservatives for torpedoing their own campaign because they obey Reagan's dictum of 'never speak ill of another Republican'? McConnell? Really? Do forty percent of Kentuckians even know who he is? Does ten percent of the general American population even know who McConnell is? Rand lost because Mc-$#@!ing-Connell? McConnell? Are you $#@!ing kidding me?

This election was engineered right out from under conscientious, traditional, freedom-loving Americans. And like the girl in the old Shake and Bake commercials, you can proudly say, 'And Ah heped!' Well congratu-$#@!ing-lations. When are you going to get enough sense to stop bragging about helping torpedo your own nation and all the people in it?

Rand killed his own campaign. Bull-flipping-$#@!. Rand ran the only kind of campaign any sane person would try to run after seeing what was done to his father. He tried to run on a platform of liberty and free enterprise without marginalizing himself so the media could dismiss him out of hand. And the media painted someone else as someone they hated, and publicized him 24/7 right into the White House. When are the people who bought that bull$#@! hook line and sinker going to stop bragging about what fools they've been? That's what I want to know. I can understand the paid trolls hanging around. But when are the suckers going to stop bragging about being suckers?

I've been trying to figure out since the Nixon Administration became the Ford Administration why Republican voters stick by their mistakes so doggedly. Shakespeare made sense when he said, 'To thine own self be true.' You don't gain anything trying to explain to the world how the people who suckered you didn't really sucker you but ulcers and headaches.

As for you Lesser of Two Evil trolls, stuff it. This isn't about whether Trump or Pence or Be'ezelbub is worse than Hillary $#@!ing Clinton. This isn't even so much about the person I responded to. This is mostly about traitors like AuHtwenty and his horde of concern trolls, and their relentless efforts to cast aspersions on Rand Paul before Iowa. Anti-American traitorous fascist bastards. Of course, they were just doing their jobs. Whatever. And now they slink around and, since there's no election right now, say placating things like, gee, that didn't work out as well as I hoped. But as long as we keep blaming Rand Paul for not finding a way to run a perfect campaign despite the obvious and golden fact that the media will not cooperate, the longer the traitorous bastards are going to keep fooling us into shooting ourselves in the foot. That debacle was not Rand Paul's fault. He did the obvious thing. And if we hadn't been suckered into leaving him high and dry, it might have actually worked despite the media's efforts to sink us. But instead, we listened to media trolls, and let the man down. Period. And as long as we let them divide and conquer us over trivia and unfounded bull$#@!, Hayek was right and we're $#@!ing useless.

And how many of you didn't get paid, yet can say we blew our best chance ever...

This needs it's own 5 starred, pinned and locked thread.

Theye have refused their Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Theye have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Theye kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies

Theye have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution,

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

Theye plundered and destroyed the lives of our people.

Theye are at this time transporting Armies of Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of a civilized nation.